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Brian Palmer has an interesting piece in Slate making the case for cheap wine. It turns out that in Germany, the average wine drinker only spends about $1.79 on a bottle of wine, whereas here in the states an "everyday" bottle runs about $15. This is despite the fact that basically nobody can tell the difference between a cheap bottle and a really cheap bottle - or, for that matter, between cheap bottles and much more expensive vintages:

Not long ago, American wine-buying habits were very similar to the Germans’. In 1995, 59 percent of the wine purchased in the United States sold for less than $3 per bottle. By 2006, controlling for inflation, that share had dropped to 29 percent. Wines over $14 per bottle more than quadrupled their share of the market during the same period. Looking at raw consumption rather than market share, sales of over-$14 wine increased sevenfold. Sales of wines that cost less than $3 per bottle actually declined 28 percent, during a period when overall wine consumption was rapidly increasing. [...]

Many studies show that laymen actually prefer cheaper wines (PDF). Professional wine critics are quick to point out that they, unlike you and I, can distinguish between high- and low-cost bottles in blinded experiments. Here’s the question they can’t answer for you: So what? The only thing these “successes” prove is that a small group of people have gotten very good at sniffing out the traits that the wine industry thinks entitle them to more money.

Yeah, I've done these blind tastes before with friends who swore they could tell the difference. Give them three different bottles of Yellowtail and then pretend that one is really expensive. They'll pick one out for sure, and swear it's the expensive bottle.

It's like people who swear by Bud Light over Coors. Give them a blind taste and they won't be able to tell the difference.